Facebook embraces Apple’s Live Photos

Video killed the radio star, and now it’s going after still photography. Facebook has become the latest social platform to support Apple’s Live Photos, a feature that brings images to life – Harry Potter-style.

The social media giant announced it’s started supporting the feature for limited users, with a wider rollout expected into next year. Yahoo’s Tumblr embraced the feature last month.

Live Photos launched in September with the iPhone 6S range, but sharing options were limited to Apple apps such as the sharing app Messages. The feature allows users to take photos while simultaneously recording a three-second video with sound. This can then be shared. The photos appear like still images, which become animated when it’s viewed, just like the living portraits in the Harry Potter movies. It’s like GIFs, but with higher definition.

This feature is perfect for those instances when you don’t know you want a video until after you’ve taken the picture.

Live Photos can only be created on iPhone 6s devices, but can be viewed on older iPhone and iPad models running iOS 9. Users on other handsets and web browsers simply see normal pictures.

With its affinity for having users create, share and view more video, this feature should give Facebook an edge over its main competition, Twitter. The social network launched the video streaming feature Live earlier this month, which resembles Meerkat and Periscope. It also boasts a new collage sharing feature, which combines images and videos.

Facebook hasn’t indicated whether it plans to include Live Photos in its Instagram platform.

Video is becoming increasingly important for Facebook. According to Nanigans, the leading provider of advertising automation software for in-house marketers, video ads accounted for 22 per cent of ad spend on the platform, its highest ever.

Entertainment trade magazine Variety reports that Facebook could make $3.8 billion in revenue from video advertising by 2017.